ENTWISTLE, Alta. — Hours after being evacuated from his trailer in Gainford, Alta. early Saturday, Billy Clarke snuck back home to turn on his generator.

“I went back in through the bush,” Clarke said Sunday afternoon as he enjoyed a beer at the Iron Wheel Tavern in neighbouring Entwistle. “I made a fire, had breakfast and watched a little TV — and then the cops caught up with me.”

RCMP officers making a sweep through Gainford noticed smoke billowing from Clarke’s chimney and pounded on the door.

“They asked me, ‘What are you doing here?’ and I told them ‘I live here’ ” Clarke said. “Then they told me I couldn’t be here, and had to get out.”

A woodlot worker, Clarke is among the 100 residents who were displaced when a CN Rail locomotive jumped the tracks in the hamlet about 85 kilometres west of Edmonton.

With three rail cars carrying propane on fire and a fourth threatening to burst into flames, authorities roused people from their sleep and sent them to the community hall in Entwistle.

A controlled burn of derailed rail cars is carried out in Gainford, Alta., on Sunday, Oct. 20, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ho-Parkland County

The evacuation order remained in effect on Sunday as investigators from the Transportation Safety Board and CN Rail began trying to figure out how 13 cars carrying fuel products derailed on a stretch of track in rural Alberta while travelling 35 km/h.

Two cars were still burning on Sunday and propane from a third was being vented in an attempt to keep it from igniting. Another car that had been compromised in the crash burned itself out overnight.

“We’ve been told we may not be able to return home for at least another 24 hours,” Clarke said while quaffing a cold one with a handful of fellow evacuees. “I think we should be allowed to go back to our houses. We’re downwind of the accident site.”

Hauling freight from Edmonton to Vancouver, the train derailed at about 1 a.m. Saturday. One car exploded on impact.

“It lit my whole yard,” Clarke, 47, who lives less than a kilometre away, said. “My place was like a Roman candle.”

Clarke woke a house guest and then ran to alert neighbours that something disastrous had just happened.

Awakened from a deep sleep, Rod Fraser went outside to take a look.

“I saw a great big red fireball,” Fraser, 46, said.

About two hours later firefighters ordered them to grab a few belongings, and to leave pets behind.

“They said we’d be able to go back and feed our animals but we haven’t been able to,” Fraser said. “Everybody is pissed off this happened. It’s screwed up. I am not going to able to work tomorrow.”

In churches around the community on Sunday, congregants prayed for the evacuees.

“We thanked God for his presence in it all, that it wasn’t worse than it was,” said Larry Nutbrown, pastor at the Entwistle Community Church.

At the Jehova’s Witness Kingdom Hall in nearby Evansburg, worshippers were making arrangements to help victims.

“We are trying to see what we can do help their physical and emotional needs,” Jack Eckstein said. “I think people are realizing this is a bigger issue than they thought. It’s starting to sink in.”

At the Iron Wheel Tavern, evacuees sipped beers and shared stories about a night they won’t forget. One fellow worried that a holiday trip to Cuba may have to be scrapped because he left his passport at home.

“If I miss the trip it won’t be the end of the world,” he said. “But somebody is going to pay for my plane ticket, and it’s not going to be me.”